Alex Kerkovich
Alex Kerkovich Alex Kerkovich is a fictional character played by Elisha Cuthbert, from the ABC comedy, Happy Endings. Character Overview Alex is a ditzy blonde girl, raised in the city of Chicago. On the day of her wedding, she leaves her fiancé and childhood friend, Dave Rose, at the alter and runs away. Leaving everyone to believe that she ran away with her co-worker Bo Bazinski. Everyone at the wedding was left stunned, and Dave crushed. Alex uses her honeymoon to reflect and returns to her and Dave's apartment, begging forgiveness for hurting him, but explaining that she was having second thoughts about their stagnating relationship for years. Though she does not wish to get back together with Dave, she genuinely feels bad for hurting him, and the two eventually reconcile. Alex gets especially concerned about how her actions affected their mutual circle of close friends. Alex owns her own boutique women's clothing store named "Xela" (her name spelled backward and pronounced "Shayla") in the heart of Chicago, which does not do very well and is rarely busy. She frequently spends time with Dave, her older sister, Jane, brother-in-law, Brad Williams, friend Max Blum, and childhood friend, Penny Hartz at the group's favorite bar and hang out spot, Rosalita's. Character History Early life Alex grew up in the city of Chicago, as the youngest of three daughters in the Kerkovich family. Raised to be proud of their Serbian heritage, she and her sisters speak fluent Serbian and have great respect for their Serbian traditions. Alex likely gained her voracious appetite from her mother, who taught her how to use her wiles to procure the best food from meat carvers and taught her "buffet strategy". Her oldest sister, Brooke Kerkovich, despite being intimidating and overly perfect, treated her kindly as the baby of the family. Her middle sister, Jane, was often frustrated with Alex for constantly showing her up and taking attention away from her. However, she and Jane were quite close, developing a "sisters only" language with one another and being so in sync that they are capable of finishing one another's sentences and dominating guessing games such as Charades. Despite her and Jane's closeness, their relationship also involves a high degree of dishonesty as a means of sparing one another's feelings. Once, when they were young, the two attempted to be extremely honest with one another, resulting in a feud that resulted in massive destruction of public property and their family being ashamed. Their feud was only resolved when their intimidating grandmother, Nana, forced them to perform the "Сестра Плес" ("Sister Dance"). The dance made them remember that they are sisters and forgive one another, and the two went back to being being dishonest with one another and instead complained to others to deal with any frustrations they had with each other in order to maintain harmony. During Alex's childhood, she became lifelong friends with Penny Hartz and Dave Rose. Despite being generally liked by everyone who encountered her, Alex earned the dislike of Dave's father, Dave "Big Dave" Rose, for allegedly spilling her Yoohoo! chocolate drink on his sheepskin seat covers when she was nine years old. (In actuality, it was Jane who spilled her chocolate milk, but she framed Alex, thinking that Big Dave would go easy on her for being young and adorable.) She was also a childhood bully, having reached a growth spurt before the other kids. Eventually, she and Dave begin going out, and Dave, being poor and just out of college, gives her a snow globe of Paris, a place she had always wanted to visit, with his apartment key taped to it and asks her to move in with him. After several years of dating, the two become engaged. Jane makes plans for the four of them to eventually move to the suburbs and live side by side. However, her stagnating relationship with Dave lead her to have second thoughts about their marriage plans. Season 1 At the beginning of the series, Alex is at the altar, as Dave says his wedding vows to her. Before he can finish, Alex's casual coworker, Bo Bazinski, bursts into the church on roller blades and objects to the wedding, screaming that he is in love with her. After repeating the doubts Alex had told him about Dave (that she wasn't sure that she was still in love with him, that he had let himself go, and that the sex was bad), Bo asks her to run away with him. Apologizing to Dave, Alex runs away with him, leaving Dave devastated, and their friends shocked. After going on the honeymoon alone, Alex returns to her and Dave's apartment to apologize to him. She explains that Bo was just a coworker and that she didn't love him, but took his interruption as an opportunity to flee. Dave angrily rejects her despite her apologies, and she learns that Dave has started hooking up with a young girl named Jackie. The two try to put their differences aside to celebrate Penny's 30th birthday, but tensions between them and their friends erupt: Dave continues to openly harbor anger toward Alex for humiliating him and breaking his heart, Alex expresses jealousy at Dave hooking up with Jackie, and Jane is furious with Alex for ruining her plans to have them all move to the suburbs and start a family now that she and Dave are not getting married. After Alex calls Jackie an "underage slut" Jackie throws her drink in Alex's face and leaves. Recognizing that their fighting is tearing their friends apart, she and Dave decide to put their differences aside, Dave admitting that he had taken their relationship for granted and Alex admitting that running out on the wedding was a crappy thing to do. Alex begins hanging out with her friends and Dave again and resumes her life as it was. Dave decides to move out of their apartment and into Max's. Being newly single is a difficult adjustment for Alex, and she tries to preoccupy herself with disastrous "Girls Night" activities with Penny and bad casual dates. Her relationship with Dave remains rocky, as nearly anything will cause them to argue, to the point that their friends begin double booking them separately to spend time with them apart. Alex eventually realizes that her leaving Dave at the altar had a deep impact on him, humiliating him both in front of their loved ones and when the footage went viral on the internet. However, she recognizes that she can't erase what she did and that she and Dave still care for one another, and when he faces financial hurdles in taking on a new career, she gives him back her wedding ring so he can sell it to build starter funds for his dream restaurant. Alex still finds, however, that she still has some lingering feelings for Dave, and when he asks her about whether she got the tattoo of his name removed, she lies and says she did, though she later reveals that she kept it before he gets his tattoo of her name removed. They both decide to keep their tattoos to acknowledge their shared past (and because laser removal hurt too much). She also finds herself relying on his handyman skills around the apartment, asking him to help her around the house, though they both realize they need to learn to adjust to their newfound separation. Their feelings come to a head when they attend a friend Jason Shershow's wedding. Though she is treated coldly by Shershow's fiance Melinda for being a "wedding jinx", she admits to Melinda that she was afraid of her whole life being laid out in front of her and ran away because it wasn't perfect, but regrets winding up "pretending to be best friends with the guy who could have been the love of her life" instead. Dave overhears her and the two later dance at the reception as friends. Season 2 On the anniversary of Alex leaving Dave at the altar, they and their friends decide to use the honeymoon suite they originally reserved. She and Dave learn that during their relationship, they both lied to one another about things that bothered them, such as Dave being allergic to shellfish because he actually hated Alex's jambalaya and saying he was allergic to dogs because he believed Alex to be too irresponsible to own one. In trying to prove him wrong, Alex smokes up her apartment during a cooking accident and acquires a pet snake named Tyler who escapes into her apartment. Needing a new place to live, Alex becomes Penny's new roommate. She experiences a short boom in her store's popularity when she begins selling baby onesies and they become a hit as micro t-shirts among high school girls. Later, when Dave begins dating a mean, superficial, but attractive girl named Molly who offends all their friends, Alex unexpectedly gets along fine with her. She reveals to him that she's fine with Molly because she knows Dave isn't serious about her, but that she will likely become upset once he starts a serious relationship with someone. Her own dating life experiences some disaster. During Halloween at the Monster Mash Pumpkin Bash party, despite being incredibly sick, she dresses as Marilyn Monroe, a costume she had always wanted to do. She spends the night with a flirtatious guy only to learn that he is gay and thought she was a guy in killer drag due to her incredibly deep voice caused by her flu. After being encouraged by Dave, she salvages her night by participating in the drag competition, but loses to Max. Penny tries setting her up with some dates, but she finds herself ultimately uninterested, preferring her singledom. However, after Max uses his incredible kissing skills on her in an attempt to make Dave jealous, she finds herself infatuated with him. She later gets over it after being forced by Penny and Max to witness how slovenly and disgusting Max truly is in his daily life. Exploring some of her interests, Alex tries to design a dress for Jane, but fails miserably. When Dave confronts her about her habit of giving away "useless" homemade coupons as Christmas gifts because she knows no one will use them, she sets out to fill each one she ever gave, ultimately throwing their friends an indoor beach party. She also finds herself bonding with Brad as her brother-in-law when they both discover their passion for romantic comedies. To keep herself company in the store, she adopts a parrot named Tyler on Craigslist, who turns out to be a white supremacist because his former owner was a Neo-Nazi. She also decides to open her store on Sundays to an English as a Second Language class for Chinese immigrants after embarrassingly mistaking the class meet ups for an illegal sex ring at the Chinese restaurant next door. Doing so allows her to have company (besides Tyler) while she does her store inventory on Sundays. She gets into various hijinks, such as staging an intervention with Max on Dave over his "addiction" to v-necks, and pushing Max to reconcile with his ex-boyfriend Grant on St. Valentine's Day. (Her own enthusiastic plans for celebrating love on Valentine's Day plans fizzled when she was mistaken for a prostitute while wearing her grandmother's vintage party clothes and asking a cop for directions to a party.) When Penny introduces her a new diet cleanse, she takes it to the extreme and begins a regiment of nothing but organic dietary pills and supplements, but stops when her cleanse group proposes a mass orgy. After a night of helping Dave clean up his food truck, she and Dave make out and wind up having sex. Horrified that it will complicate their reestablished friendship, she enlists Jane to help her to "Kerkovitch" Dave, gaslighting him by planting false details to make him believe that he just imagined them having sex. Jane plants false evidence that "proves" that Alex couldn't have spent the night with Dave, because she, Brad, and Akex had a night in eating takeout Thai food and a renting Mamma Mia!. However, the coverup is exposed when Alex forgets to backdate the DVD rental, proving it was rented that morning. After discussing it with her, Dave agrees to pretend as though their hook up never happened. Alex also steps in to help her friends with their problems. During Penny's birthday dinner, the group is horrified to learn that their waitress is Jackie, Dave's barely legal ex-girlfriend. The group is afraid that she will contaminate their food, as she still holds a grudge about Dave breaking up with her, but Alex apologizes to her in private and asks her to just let Penny have a good time. Jackie explains that she didn't do anything to their food, but did slash the tires to what she thought was Dave's car (but was actually Penny's). Alex also advises Dave when he is being bullied by a guy at his gym, telling him that as a former bully herself, she knows that Dave just needs to stand up to him. When Jane falls into a lax state and can't oversee her Home Owner's Association, Alex snaps her out of it by exploiting Jane's neurotic tendencies, ensuring that the HOA plans will go smoothly. Likewise, when Penny stages an elaborate ruse to get out of hanging out with an acquaintance, she agrees to go along with it, first pretending to be a lesbian and then later pretending to be attracted to Max and Dave's landlord to prevent them from getting evicted. During the summer, Alex enrolls all her friends in an intramural kickball tournament, representing her store, Xela, in a bid to promote her business and give her friends something fun to do together. Jane refuses, stating that she already agreed to join another team, Kaz's Autobody, and that they have a chance of winning, unlike Team Xela. Though Team Xela is close to losing, Alex manages to rally them together and they make it to the final play offs. However, Jane's manipulations during the face off between Team Xela and Team Kaz's Autobody causes them to be knocked out of the finals. However, Jane realizes that she would rather use her skills with her friends than against them and has Kaz's Autobody disqualified by revealing that the team cheated using steel-toed sneakers. Team Xela still loses in the final match against Ivanov Nail Salon, but the group celebrates together. In the season finale, the group becomes part of their friend Derrick's wedding party in his marriage to his partner Erick. Alex helps encourage Max to reunite with the members of his old all-male Madonna cover band, Mandonna, to perform at Derrick and Erick's wedding. At the reception, Alex and Dave quietly decide to get back together. Season 3 Dave and Alex share that they are dating again with their friends. They plan to keep things casual, and Alex tries to prove this by setting Dave up with a bartender, Karissa. However, they both realize that they get jealous seeing the other with someone else and decide to become exclusive and move in together. While apartment hunting, it becomes clear that Dave and Alex both have some hesitation with moving forward again, but despite this, they elect to go ahead and rent an apartment together. After Jane tells her that she is concerned that Dave and Alex are falling into old habits that caused their break up in the first place, Alex tries to be spontaneous, ending in disaster. Dave's attempts to throw her a surprise Paris date night at home are likewise disastrous, resulting in Alex getting arrested by TSA for trying to board a plane with a fake ticket to Paris he had printed for her. While they are detained by airport security, she and Dave realize that they are more thoughtful now than they were back then, even if they aren't extremely spontaneous and passionate. However, when they host a Thanksgiving at their new apartment, she reveals that Dave has yet to move his belongings into their new apartment, which Penny causally questions. While the gang watches an old video of Max and Brad's time on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World The Real World]: Sacramento, Penny's confessional suggests that she had some secret, unexamined feelings for Dave. This causes Alex to believe that Penny's earlier comment about Dave not moving his stuff in yet was an attempt to sabotage their relationship. She accuses Penny of trying to ruin their relationship because she wants Dave for herself, but the rest of the group exasperatingly tell her that Dave not moving his stuff into the apartment yet is weird. Alex apologizes to Penny and talks to Dave, who explains that he told Alex that his movers were going to be late, but Alex didn't hear it because she was actually napping with her eyes open when he told her. Dave later learns that Alex has anxiety over their new relationship when he discovers that she has yet to tell her family that the are dating again. Alex's father has only just forgiven her for ruining the wedding and wasting his savings. At Mr. Kerkovich's family celebration, Dave announces that they are together and that Alex shouldn't be ashamed because he's not either, and her family gives their approval. During Christmas, Alex learns that Jane's true birthday is December 25th, Christmas Day, and resolves with their friends to throw Jane a birthday party on her actual birthday. Her resolve fails her due to her obsessive need to unwrap gifts, and she contributes to a spectacular disaster of a birthday party for Jane. After attending the RomCom Con, a romantic comedy convention, cosplaying as Annie Hall, she finds her racist parrot dead, supposedly from committing suicide by jumping out her apartment window. Penny and Brad later claim responsibility during his funeral, believing they accidentally killed Tyler by exposing him to glue fumes. Upon reading the autopsy report, Alex learns that it was her fault for feeding Tyler alcoholic margaritas during their Taco Tuesday celebrations, and Tyler died of liver failure. Her store finds some additional success when she sells a dress to world famous pop star Winnie McCray and Penny convinces her to tip off the paparazzi to Winnie's secret dinner date location in an effort to give her boutique more exposure. It pays off when Winnie unexpectedly goes on a rampage after the paparazzi ruin her date with her boyfriend Kyle and screams that she got her dress from Xela. Winnie returns to Alex's boutique knowing that she was the one who told the paparazzi her location. Alex feels terrible for Winnie and she and Penny make it up to her by arranging a private date for her and Kyle in Dave's food truck. After Dave gets pranked with a "Guns for Subs" coupon at his food truck, he proposes to get back at the culprit—Max—by having the group stage a fake lottery drawing where Max will think he won. When the ruse is revealed, Max, humiliated, swears revenge on everyone. Alex nearly falls to pieces under the stress of waiting for Max's prank revenge and finally goes to his apartment and cuts off her hair and swears to help him prank everyone else, hoping it will make them even. She tries to get Dave to sit on a spring-loaded couch cushion, but Dave sees through her ploy and Alex triggers the trap instead, injuring her leg. In a final bid to prank Max, Dave hot wires Max's limo to fill with popcorn when he turns the key, but it instead explodes. Dave is horrified that his prank killed his best friend, but Max reveals that he's alive and that Alex tipped him off and that he rigged the explosion himself. Dave is so relieved that he calls the prank war off. As the group enjoys a round of drinks, Max laughs at Alex thinking she outsmarted anyone after cutting off her own hair and injuring her leg trying to avoid Max. Alex leaves to take care of the store and the group learns that Alex was the one actually behind the original "Guns for Subs" prank and had started the whole thing without them suspecting otherwise. Walking alone, Alex reveals that her cut hair is a wig and that her leg was fine all along. When the group attends a wedding convention on Valentine's Day to convince Penny's fiancé Pete to have a wedding instead of eloping, Dave and Alex get paired together. Alex reveals that Dave was a "groomzilla" during their wedding planning and that she wishes she had had more say in their wedding. She sets out to prove that Dave can't be open to any ideas but his own, and he proves himself to be open to her ludicrous ideas, such as a bounce house and a scuba wedding. However, her fondness for beige napkins and a baby animal petting zoo set him off once again. Realizing that he was selfish during his wedding planning, Dave apologizes to her by giving her a baby chick nested in a beige napkin. He promises to that if they ever end up planning a wedding again that it will be an equal decision making process. When asked to help Brad at his new job at the daycare Chuckles and Hugs, Alex contributes by hosting an arts and crafts table. Upon finding that the bracelets the children made can sell for hundreds of dollars, she begins selling them in her store and pushing the kids to make more. She eventually realizes that she has inadvertently been running a child sweatshop to meet demand for the bracelets and quickly shuts it down. Dave and Jane later try to get Alex to give up her junk TV and expand her mind. Alex demonstrates that she can be quite intelligent, devouring books and becoming smarter and more manipulative than Dave and Jane, intimidating them. She decides to host a salon gathering at her store with other intellectuals, but finds herself outpaced by them. Dave and Jane convince her to just be herself and she kicks the party attendants out. Alex's Happy Ending Let's...not. Let's not do that... Trivia - Once fell for Max after learning what a wonderful kisser he was. - Left Dave at the altar for a man on rollerblades. - Named both pets she acquired on the show; a snake and a racist parrot, Tyler. - Was a DJ in college and went by the name "DJ Alex Haley" due to her love of Haley's Comet. - Despite usually being ditzy and slow, she occasionally demonstrates keen intellectual prowess, such as when she really cares about a subject (such as St. Valentine's Day), decides to learn about a topic, or when she instigated a prank war among her friends without them knowing it was her. - Her store, Xela, is pronounced "Shayla". - She is of Serbian ethnicity. - Unwittingly ran a child labour ring in a storage room for a short period of time. Category:Characters Category:Females